Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series vs. SentinelOne Singularity

It is well-suited for a company needing strong edge security with ease of administration. It comes standard with many features such as VPN, Application ID and "Day-1 Config" that make the networks it protects secure from the very start. Palo is definitely a premium product and is much more expensive than other firewalls, but the value is realized immediately. The robust options for firewall rules/policies allow the administrator to apply security in new and creative ways to hit the sweet spot between security and usability.

Incentivized

It works extremely well for investigating the root cause analysis of events because you can see so much detail into what was happening before, after, and around the detective incident. A weak point would be when the AI gets a little over-aggressive or doesn’t quite understand the use case for specific tools. Our RMM tool was detected as a pup.

• The PA handles VPN connectivity without missing a beat. We have multiple VPN tunnels in use for redundancy to cloud-based services.
• The PA has great functionality in supporting failover internet connections, again with the ability to have multiple paths out to our cloud-based services.
• The PA is updated on the regular with various security updates, we are not concerned with the firewall's ability to see what packets are really flowing across the network. Being able to see beyond just IP and port requests lets you know things are locked down better than traditional firewalls.
• It is a great overall kit, with URL filtering and other services that fill in the gaps between other solutions without breaking the bank.

Incentivized

• Installs on all of our Windows machines and only requires 1 reboot for the install to finish.
• It allows you to customize the UI and filters based on your use case.
• Gives a very high level of visibility into any concerns you have or should have in your network.

Incentivized

• Setting up certain things can be somewhat complicated due to the numerous options and abstractions involved.
• It would be nice to have somewhere to get simple canned reports easily.
• It would be nice to be able to remove options we never use from various setup dialogs.

Incentivized

• Possibly for compatibility with legacy Windows OS's and non Windows OS's.
• Some settings are greyed out and unable to change but I believe this is to protect you from making a bad configuration change.
• Could do better with reporting at the base level subscription.

Incentivized

The PA5220s have far exceeded what we have expected out of them. It was a bit of a learning curve coming from another vendor, but everything falls into place now with ease. The capabilities of the solution still surprise us, allowing us to remove other costly hardware and providing a single point of management needed

Incentivized

Reliable for simple installation and above all efficient

Incentivized

It can be a little tricky at first if you have never used the product or a firewall before. If you have experience with firewalls in general, it does not take long to learn the Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewalls - PA Series interface. They offer great training resources and knowledge base articles to help get up to speed.

Incentivized

There are some minor issues with the platform that can be mildly frustrating, but the overall performance, peace of mind, and ROI make it worth using. The management console is intuitive and easy to learn, the endpoint clients are simple but give IT professionals enough data to make management easy and simple

Incentivized

We've run into a couple undocumented bugs, but that seems to happen with every brand and technology. Any time we've had to engage Palo Alto support they've always been professional, knowledgeable and prompt. In almost all cases we've been able to resolve our issues without having to escalate our tickets.

Incentivized

Their support is good and quick to respond. The one issue we faced was when a non-protection issue arose there was a lot of dancing around trying to figure things out. This was frustrating as it took significantly longer to figure out issues. Lots of repetitive log gathers, screen caps, uninstalls that never seemed to resolve issues. Eventually, the product would be updated and the issue seemed to be resolved, but seemed to be the only solution.

Incentivized

We are using Cisco ASA before in our environment but when it comes to deep scanning & layer 7 security it doesn't have that capability. After using Palo Alto Networks Next-Generation Firewall we are using sandboxing & advance malware protection that provides high-level end-user security. Also after implementing it we can easily monitor user-level traffic.

Incentivized

SentinelOne had all of the major features that we were looking for. The other products either required too much administrative attention or were lacking key features. For example, one could be uninstalled by the end user. We required that the installation be password protected to protect against end user disabling or uninstalling. One product required manual intervention for all remediation which put to high a burden on limited staff. All products are always being revised so these may no longer be issues but they had a significant impact on our decision.

Incentivized

• We used to outsource our Firewall and it's management. Not only did we find their SLA's to be lacking, in general, but communication between us was horrible. Many times we could not understand them and that resulted in less than desirable rule creation or troubleshooting.
• Since we no longer have to pay a company for 24/7 management (and SLOW SLA's) we are saving a ton of money each year. Also our fellow employee's are much happier that things can be resolved in a timely manner.

Incentivized

• SentinelOne has already proved its value by stopping attacks that would have gone otherwise unnoticed until much later in their infection process.
• The Vigilance team has provided quick response to threats that were not easily contained via the automated response SentinelOne's agents provide. This has given us a significant piece of mind.

Incentivized